Analysis: Kennelly Tossed Overboard By Incumbents

May 07, 1998|By JON LENDER; Courant Political Writer

There was a special symbolism in the ritual cheers and backslaps of legislative adjournment at the state Capitol Wednesday night, and it was this: The one-party system is alive and well in Connecticut.

It's the incumbent party.

Incumbents -- both Democrat and Republican, both in the legislature and the governor's office -- partied politically from Feb. 4 through midnight Wednesday, in a three-month lawmaking session glaringly devoid of political conflict for a gubernatorial election year.

Partisan differences in the 1998 General Assembly were obliterated by a much more powerful force: the desire of incumbent lawmakers to win re-election.

Some expected that this session would be a rough one for incumbent Republican Gov. John G. Rowland; Democrats, who control both the House and the Senate, would fight Rowland on legislation to make him look bad and soften him up for Democratic gubernatorial challenger Barbara B. Kennelly.

It didn't happen.

This year, Connecticut's ship of state became the Love Boat -- and Kennelly got tossed overboard by her own party.

Legislative Democrats agreed constantly with the governor on bills -- and he went out of his way to agree with them on bills concerning the minimum wage, gun control and other issues he has not been identified with in the past.

The love-in gave Kennelly no issues to seize on, and a harmonious legislative session always benefits the incumbent chief executive. In sum: Legislative Democrats did nothing to pull Kennelly back into serious contention from where she now sits, more than 20 points behind Rowland in recent polls. That goes for: House Speaker Thomas D. Ritter of Hartford, Kennelly's campaign co-chairman; Senate President Pro Tem Kevin B. Sullivan of West Hartford; and rank-and-file Democrats in both chambers.

They saw it as more in their re- election interest to side with their fellow incumbent, Rowland, than their fellow Democrat, Kennelly, on perhaps the key political issue of the 1998 session: a plan to use $115 million of the state's surplus to send tax-rebate checks of $50 to $150 this summer to 1.2 million people.

Many believe the rebate plan will give Rowland a tremendous boost on Nov. 3, particularly after he bangs his rebate drum in TV commercials.

Democrats want badly to guard their legislative control -- particularly their slim 19-17 majority in the Senate. They figured that their best move was to ride along with the popular Rowland and the rebates to re-election -- even if that meant leaving Kennelly, who opposes the rebates as an election-year ``gimmick,'' standing alone at the station.

Well, she isn't quite alone. Standing with her is Rep. Carl J. Schiessl, D-Windsor Locks, whose opposition to the rebates made him one of only 19 Democrats in either chamber to vote against this year's tax package.

``What happened in 1998 is that the parties here conspired to effectuate what I think is a gimmick built upon a fraud . . . because they felt it was politically expedient to do so,'' Schiessl said. Of his fellow legislative Democrats, Schiessl said, ``My guess is that some of them may have felt that she's so far behind that there's no point'' in fighting Rowland on the rebates.

A few Democrats who supported the rebates have said privately that they agree with Kennelly's contention that the proposal should have been rejected in favor of paying down the state's Matterhorn of debt.

But Rowland played the rebate issue skillfully, incorporating it in a spate of recent campaign TV ads, and he put Democrats in the position of telling Joe and Nancy Nutmegger: ``No, you can't have your $150 check this summer, even though the governor and Republicans want you to have it. It's bad fiscal policy.''

The politics of that would have been all wrong.

``Typically, what I've found is when a public servant is motivated by politics, it's not the politics of somebody else,'' Schiessl said. ``It's a very selfish motivation. They were worried about their own re- election campaigns.''

Top Democrats insist that they have not abandoned Kennelly, that the session was all about governing, and they will help her in the upcoming campaign. But their actions in the session speak differently; and some of them acknowledge in private that the session has set up Rowland for a potentially big win.

Kennelly, of course, was not at the Capitol adjournment festivities Wednesday night. She had no official role there as the U.S. congresswoman from the 1st District -- and had nothing to celebrate.

But in a way, her presence was felt -- for a couple of reasons.

First, some smart people, like Schiessl and University of Connecticut political science Professor Richard C. Kearney, say that Kennelly is right on the policy question. ``Most people who follow government closely . . . would agree that this is not a wise thing to do with our surplus,'' Kearney said.